What Are Poor Negotiations Costing You?

Unnecessary discounts
Margin erosion
Scope creep
Free additional work
Poor customer agreements
Damaged relationships

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A single unnecessary concession can cost considerably more than the training that would have prevented it.

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What negotiations are your people facing?

Price pressure? Scope changes? Procurement demands? Difficult customers? Compensation requests? Internal disagreements?

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Tell us what's happening.

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We'll help you identify where better preparation, communication and negotiation skills could improve the outcome.

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Talk to PSL

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No hard sell.

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Just a useful conversation.

Particularly Effective for Engineering & Technical Organisations

PSL specialises in the human performance challenges surrounding technical work.

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We understand that engineers, project managers and technical specialists often find themselves negotiating without being professional negotiators.

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They negotiate scope, time, access, resources, responsibilities, technical solutions, customer expectations and commercial outcomes every day.

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We give technical people a practical structure they can actually use.

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Build Effective Negotiation Skills

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PSL Negotiation Skills Training helps engineers, managers, sales teams, project teams and technical professionals become more confident and effective when negotiating with customers, suppliers, colleagues and stakeholders.

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Think clearly. Ask better questions. Protect value. Reach better agreements.

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Negotiation becomes difficult when pressure takes over

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People do not always behave rationally during negotiations. Stress, uncertainty, expectations, ego, assumptions and fear of loss can quickly affect judgement. Your toolkit specifically recognises that stress can lead to tunnel vision, mistakes, misunderstandings and lost opportunities.

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People may react rather than think, negotiate too quickly, concentrate on price, defend their position or make concessions simply to relieve the pressure.

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PSL helps people recognise what is happening - in themselves and in others and respond more intelligently.

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Understand before you negotiate

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One of the strongest principles within PSL negotiation training is simple:

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Do not negotiate too soon.

Effective negotiation starts with understanding.

• What does the customer actually want?
• What is most important to them?
• Who really has authority?
• What are they trying to achieve?
• What are they worried about losing?
• What alternatives do they have?
• What does value actually mean to them?

Your toolkit describes negotiation as part of a wider process:

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UNDERSTAND → CONSULT → EXPLORE → NEGOTIATE → AGREE

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Rather than jumping immediately into bargaining. That distinction can protect enormous amounts of value.

Stop Giving Value Away

Under pressure, people often make concessions simply to keep the conversation moving.

• A discount.
• Free labour.
• Additional scope.
• Faster delivery.
• Extra support.
• Compensation.
• Extended terms.

One concession may seem insignificant. Repeated across a team, customers and projects, it can become a significant commercial cost.

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PSL teaches a simple principle:

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Never give something without understanding what you are getting in return.

Ask better questions. Listen properly.

Negotiation is often improved more by a good question than a clever argument.

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PSL develops practical questioning and listening habits using QLS — Question, Listen, Silence.

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Participants learn to slow conversations down, uncover priorities, clarify assumptions and allow the other person to explain what matters.

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The toolkit reinforces that questions build trust, challenging questions need the right level of trust, and clarifying questions demonstrate genuine listening and interest.

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Instead of assuming, we teach people to ask:

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What does that mean?

What is most important to you?

What do you prefer?

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These questions can change the entire negotiation.

Prepare before you enter the room

Strong negotiators rarely “wing it”.

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Preparation includes understanding boundaries, alternatives, stakeholders, authority, objectives, risks and possible concessions.

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Your own collected lessons from experienced negotiators repeatedly reinforce the importance of preparation, knowing the walk-away point, dealing with the true decision maker, listening carefully and preparing multiple options rather than becoming trapped around price.

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PSL gives participants practical preparation tools they can use before real customer negotiations.

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Protect margin without damaging relationships

A concession made under pressure can have consequences long after the meeting has finished.

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Your material warns that concessions made in haste can train customers to ask for the same concessions again, while poor preparation can quickly drive price and delivered value down.

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PSL therefore teaches people to slow the negotiation down, understand what is being exchanged and avoid giving something away without understanding what comes back.

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Sometimes the best move is not a lower price.

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It may be a different scope, timing, specification, commitment, volume, service level, payment structure or option.

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What participants learn

Participants develop practical capability to:

• Prepare effectively and establish objectives, boundaries and alternatives
• identify the right decision makers, influencers and stakeholders
• Use QLS to uncover needs, priorities and hidden information
• Build empathy, rapport and trust; manage stress, emotion, ego and difficult behaviour; recognise objections without becoming defensive
• Create options instead of becoming trapped around price
• Demonstrate and protect customer value; use anchors, commitments and different forms of agreement
• Make concessions intelligently
• Manage difficult conversations; know when to negotiate — and when not to
• Reach clearer agreements with ownership, actions and DDTs
• And review negotiations afterwards so performance continually improves

Practical negotiation training for real situations

This is not training built around memorising a collection of negotiating tricks.

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Participants practise situations that resemble the conversations they actually face.

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1. Customer demands.
2. Price pressure.
3. Procurement negotiations.
4. Project disagreements.
5. Scope changes.
6. Service problems.
7. Contract discussions.
8. Internal negotiations.
9. Difficult stakeholders.
10. Requests for compensation.

Commercial conversations where relationships and reputation matter.

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The objective is to develop patterns people can actually use when the pressure is real.

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Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced Negotiation Training

PSL can tailor negotiation training to the experience of the participants and the situations they face.

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Our toolkit supports negotiation skills at foundation, intermediate and advanced levels.

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Training can be delivered to individual teams or as part of a wider commercial, customer relationship, project management or leadership development programme.

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Better thinking. Better conversations. Better agreements.

Negotiation does not begin when somebody asks for a lower price.

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It begins much earlier - with understanding, relationships, preparation and the quality of the decisions being made.

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Help your people negotiate with greater confidence, protect more value and build stronger customer relationships.